PA500 attack issue

[Concatenation]

Hello everyone, I just got a new PA500 and was wondering if any of you have experienced a problem I've been having. Every now and then, in style mode, when I play a certain key(upper range) with a hard attack, the respective note is either dead(no sound) or is played back with a large latency. This only happens when I play a key really hard and, just to clarify, I cannot isolate this phenomena to a specific key. Also, I've only experienced this when playing along with the backup accompaniment. I've played Korg arrangers since the i30 and this really doesn't sound like a polyphony problem, although I'm not 100% sure. Has anyone experienced this problem, or is it just me? Any input would be appreciated.

[frankeys]

Hi Concatenation,

I hope this is not limited to some specific voices. If that is so, then you can check out if this is because of the way those voices are progammed using RX. Where you can invoke velocity specific sample.

Check out the sound edit section and correct the issue.

Regards

frankeys
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PA500 PSR620 PSS31

[Concatenation]

Hello frankeys and thanks for the reply, actually this happens mostly with RX sounds, but I can't be certain that it doesn't happen to the others.
When playing in sound mode, I've never experienced this problem - so I am not sure that it's a simple sound edit issue. Nevertheless, I will check it out. Is there anything I should look for in the sound edit?

[frankeys]

Hi,

Looks like this may be an issue with the velocity. PA has a wonderful section of Sound editing-one of the feature is invoking a different instrument sample at different velocity to create Real Experience of an instrument. Probably that's what you are observing when you are using the RX sounds.

Try accessing this PDF. THis is the advanced Sound Editing Manual of PA500.

http://www.korgpa.com/pa_root/pdf/pa500 ... AE-ENG.pdf

Hope this helps.

frankeys
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PA500 PSR620 PSS31

[karmathanever]

Might be worth performing a full complete factory reset to eliminate any OS issue.

Pete

[Rob Sherratt]

Hi concatenation,

There are some bad faults with the programming of one or two of the factory sounds on my Pa2x that cause the same thing.

Analog Strings was one of the ones I had to fix in order to make it usable. The Aftertouch was triggering a severe cut-off in the sound. So if you had Analog Strings layered with piano and then started holding the chords or some other notes so that AT kicked in, the analog strings backing would suddenly cutoff.

It seems to me that you may be experiencing something similar with some sounds on your Pa500. It may be possible to edit and resave the offending Sounds and I's suggest first of all take a close look at how AT has been programmed into the sound. In my experience several of the Korg Sounds handle AT completely wrong.

Best regards,
Rob

[Concatenation]

Frankeys, the problem is that this phenomena occurs randomly. As I said before, this only happens sometimes when playing the accompaniment and the upper voice with a hard attack. I've checked the oscillators of the RX voices that have this problem and have extensively tested to make sure all the oscillators are triggered and played at their respective velocities <-no problems there.

It's almost like the PA500 processor is over-tasked and, as a result, the sound is either delayed or doesn't come through at all; kind of like if you were watching a video on your computer and running a resource intensive app simultaneously, the video would get stuck for a sec. That's as best as I can describe it.

I'm just trying to find out if anyone else has experienced this with their PA500. If not, I will just send it in for repair.

[frankeys]

Hi Concatenation,

I get it now! Do you think it can be a problem with the memory ? imagine playing a damaged CD......To confirm this try resaving a problematic sound to another location and re-check if its relapsing.


Regards

Frank

[worth]

sounds like it could be a polyphony problem. if you reduce the numbers of track or the layers in the right hand , does this help ?

[Rob Sherratt]

Hello again Concatenation,

If this is happening mainly with RX Sounds then it is a polyphony issue because RX sounds eat more polyphony to generate the RX noises. Also if a User style or User sound is being used, some of those are programmed in such a way that OSCs (Polyphony) is eaten very quickly.

Could you check whether the problem occurs when using a standard factory style, no user sounds, no user styles, with UPPER2 and UPPER3 muted? Also please unplug your sustain pedal when doing the test. Over-use of the sustain pedal will also cause polyphony to "run out" when you are least expecting it.

Note that the Pa2x and Pa800 have 120 OSC polyphony whereas the Pa500 has 80 OSC polyphony, so you would notice lack of polyphony sooner than users on the Pa800 and Pa2x playing the same configuration.

From the information you have provided so far, I do not think there is a hardware fault, and I do not think a service center will be able to do anything.

Best regards,
Rob

[Concatenation]

Hello and thanks to everyone for their input and advice.

Here is what I did to try and isolate the issue based on your comments.

After doing a full restore, I went into Sound mode and played the first available piano sound in varying registers with varying speeds and velocities. After about 15 minutes of playing, this problem happened at C5 (no sustain). The actual problem was no sound was generated at the press of the key. Went onto Nylon Glide played around 20-25 minutes and same thing happened at C5(no sustain). Once again, this happened with hard attack. I've actually haven't experienced this in sound mode.

Afterwards, I went into style mode chose brazillian samba, started playing with the different STS's and variations, happend after about 5 or so minutes into the song, also C5. Tried to replay the notes I played that caused this problem with no success(didn't happen again).

I selected a different style, I think Kool something, and turned on the Upper 1,2,3 and Lower. Started to play and only then did I witness the poly max out. This sounded completely different. This I'm used to hearing - usually what happens is with the accompaniment playing when max poly is reached, the drum parts begin to fade, I think the snare was the first to go.

The 3 times that this problem happened during my testing were at C5 with hard attack and no use of sustain. However, I do remember this same problem happened in the past at F4 and other keys around the 4rd and 5th register. It's impossible to recreate this same problem - I played C5 for about 10-15 minutes with varying velocities and speeds to try and recreate the problem but it never happened the same way.

On an average, in about 30 or so minutes of playing, this happens at least once. This is very irritating!

I don't think the issue is related to polyphony. Also, from my understanding, aftertouch isn't a feature of the PA500 so I don't think it's aftertouch related.
The only thing I can think of is possibly low quality key triggers that randomly don't activate.

My next step would be to hook up the PA500 to my TEX via MIDI and trigger the PA500 sound engine via the extreme in an attempt to recreate this problem. If it doesn't happen then I'll know it's the keys.

[Concatenation]

Update:

I've been playing the PA500 with the extreme set as master through a midi connection. So far, I can control one channel at a time (i.e. CH01 to Upper1, CH02 to Upper2, etc.) I can't figure out how to trigger all the uppers and chord in one instance. Nevertheless, using the extreme to play Upper1 of the PA500, I haven't experienced the high vel. sound crapping out yet!

Also, since extreme has AT, I can rule out AT as the fault <- aftertouch is coming out fine on the PA500.